It's often a hard fact, a truth we can't go without, much like the fact that the sky is blue and the grass is green, we go through life profiling each other through the senseless stereotypes we've either inherited from our parents or learned from watching Chappelle's Show. It's just the way we're hard wired. Either we accept it, or we live in denial. I accepted this fact about myself many years ago, driving around town assuming that the kid with the Nike Dunks and BAPE shirt might be listening to Lupe Fiasco on his iPod, or that the guy with the bald head, red suspenders, and Doc Martens might want to kick my ass because of the color of my skin. But all this done changed when I met Alex Hudspeth, owner of this '94 Toyota Supra.
Alex is a 22-year-old college grad from Hagerstown, Md., a small city 75 miles away from Baltimore and hours from any form of tuning life. He loves to party and is way into slop tarts, but it's what he does as a profession that makes him unique from anybody who's ever driven on coilovers. Alex plays forward for the Varkaus Eagles, a professional hockey team in Eastern Finland. He isn't a benchwarmer, either: Alex won player of the week honors for his team early this year. Sure, anyone can be a tuner, but a professional hockey player dippin' inside a Supra to the ice rink? It's almost as believable as a chupacabra sighting.
What's even more unbelievable is that he's managed to churn out a pretty sexy ride-this Supra, reminiscent of the gold one from Top Secret, except this is red and lives in America. "I actually used the gold Top Secret Supra as inspiration," Alex explained, "But I built this vehicle because I've always wanted to own a Japanese supercar capable of making high numbers reliably, plus I wanted to start a new project after my Honda S2000 was done." The S2000 was actually the car Alex was known for among his circle of friends and show spectators up and down the Atlantic coast.
His S2000 was a popular car in the East Coast scene; a Team Emotion show car, which was a Hot Import Nights Best of Show winner and touted as the first 600whp S2000 in the world. It was the car that made Alex the veteran tuner he is today. But he finished the S2 to the core and wanted something to really challenge him. Enter the Toyota Supra, a car that still has many around the world perplexed as they try to perfect its engine and chassis.
Though Alex is still attempting to accomplish that feat of Supra perfection, he's managed to come close enough for an Import Tuner feature. "I purchased this car during the summer of '05. I found it stock on AutoTrader in Texas with 130,000 miles," he says, "I started buying parts for it the day it arrived, like an exhaust, downpipe, boost controller, and usual Supra bolt-ons. The first engine blew up on stock twins, followed up by the transmission and differential. That's when I closely inspected the car and found out that it had been abused as a former drag car with stock parts replaced. I was duped, but it gave me the motivation to make sure it was done right this time around."
His first stop was at Atlantic Motorsports, where he put in the HKS cams, HKS cam gears, Virtual Works intake manifold, GReddy oil cooler, and polishing and dressing up of the engine bay. He then took the Supra to 1320Motoring where he decided that "twin turbo" meant one too many snails. So 1320 upgraded the inline-six motor to a single turbo. They opted for the Precision T-76 turbocharger, coupled with an HKS manifold, GReddy blow-off valve, Tial wastegate, and Precision custom-made 4-inch intercooler piping. The exhaust system features a 4-inch titanium piece from HKS and a 90mm throttle body from Virtual Works. 1320Motoring performed all the tuning with an AEM EMS, making sure all the parts worked harmoniously to the tune of 740 dyno-proven whp.